Supercomputers/Systems/blueice
USA · decommissioned · hpc
blueice
Also known as NCAR IBM p575 blueice
Operated by NCAR .
Phase 1 seed dataset, compiled by hand. These rows were built from public operator, laboratory and vendor sources. A mechanical second-reader pass has since fetched every cited source: 1263 of 1345 systems have a readable citation that names them, and 56 are genuinely weakly sourced. Every claim carries its source and a confidence tier. Treat anything below verified as a lead, not a citation.
Measured performance
- Rmax
- 11.08 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 12.89 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 86.0%
- Cores
- 1,696
- Power
- 276 kW
- Per watt
- 0.0 GF/W
Figures are as last publicly reported for the configuration described below, not a live measurement. Where a system was upgraded in place, the post-upgrade configuration is shown and the earlier one appears in the timeline.
What this machine is made of
One row per supplier relationship. “Supplier at build” is the company that shipped the part at the time; where that company has since been acquired, the parent it rolls up to today is shown beside it. That distinction is what makes ticker-level aggregation possible across a thirty-year dataset.
| Role | Part | Supplier at build | Quantity | Confidence | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Integrator | - IBM System p5 575 cluster | IBM | - | Verified | top500.orgcisl.ucar.edu |
| CPU | - IBM POWER5+ dual-core 1.9 GHz, 1,696 processors | IBM | - | Verified | top500.orgcisl.ucar.edu |
| Interconnect | - IBM dual-link high-performance (Federation) switch | IBM | - | Verified | cisl.ucar.edutop500.org |
| Operating system | IBM AIX Operating systems Unix (System V-derived) · Proprietary IBM AIX | IBM | - | Reported | top500.org |
The read
NCAR's IBM p5-575 cluster of POWER5+ 1.9 GHz processors, acquired in the first phase of the ICESS procurement. NCAR's supercomputing history page gives its service dates as 26 October 2006 to 16 June 2008, 1,696 processors, 4.83 TB of memory, 13.31 TFlop/s peak, an IBM dual-link high-performance switch and 150 TB of FAStT DS4800 storage, and calls it NCAR's first machine to pass a sustained teraflop. The same page lists 325.40 kW of power; TOP500 lists 276 kW, 11.08 TFlop/s Rmax and 12.89 TFlop/s Rpeak on AIX, ranked 55th in November 2006, 78th in June 2007, 123rd in November 2007 and 327th in June 2008.
Timeline
- 2006-10-26 First operational source
- 2007-06 List debut at #78 (June 2007) source
- 2008-06-16 Decommissioned source
Public list appearances
Pointers only: rank and edition, linking to the canonical entry. We do not reproduce list tables. See sourcing policy.
Change history
- 2026-10-09 Added blueice
Source check
We fetched this system's own citations and recorded whether each page actually mentions it. This is a corroboration signal, not a fact check, and it is published so you can see how well the sourcing holds up rather than take it on trust.
| Cited source | Result | Found on the page |
|---|---|---|
| cisl.ucar.edu | names system only | - |
| top500.org | names system only | - |
Checked 2026-10-13 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.
Further reading
Operating a supercomputer
Acceptance testing, why "installed" and "in production" are six months apart, and the machine lifecycle.
Inside a node
Latency-optimised versus throughput-optimised processors, NUMA, and the end of the host-to-device copy.
The interconnect
Topologies, why latency and tail behaviour matter more than bandwidth, and how the fabric market consolidated.